Probably because it’s the best paying job he can ever get. What’s he gonna do when he leaves? Which other podcast/YouTube channel can he work for that’s in the Greater Vancouver Area? If he leaves his live would get upended, he either needs to move or switch careers and in both cases probably takes a salary cut. This is how shitty bosses like Linus retain employees. Just look at other shitty companies where employees don’t have transferable skills that only apply to one very specific industry, like for example the gaming industry. Employees don’t leave even when the bosses behave terribly, like Riot Games

I get it.

Imagine you start working with your friend, and you start to get successful. He starts acting like an asshole more and more, the friend part shrinks and the boss part grows, and he's oblivious to that.

But he also trusts you, would happily fund you building new things, and has an enormous audience. He's only willing to share a small slice of the pie, but it's a very big pie

Now either you leave and get a normal job, or you stay, get lots of autonomy, minor fame, and maybe a ton of money down the line, but you have to handle a narcissist.

Also by staying, you can steer the narcissist now and again - and that ripples out into the viewers

Linus has done a lot for him, that is probably the main thing.

Aside from that, when people criticized the video because he was essentially bashing a small company made by 2 dudes^1 , he then went on a rant on a WAN show saying that he wouldn't review the thing again because he is not going to waste employee time and money into doing a proper review. And that he does't really care because, ultimately, he thinks it's a product that nobody should ever buy because it's too expensive, even if the performance was great.

All said by the dude that used to make the weirdest shit and pay a shit ton of money for garbage, but god forbid someone made a waterblock for water cooling enthusiasts (you know, the kind of person that likes spending money on these products just for funsies, like audiophiles).

1. This is funny because he always tries to avoid bashing big corps, like when Nvidia fucks up a product release, but they still find something positive to say about it. But a small company composed by 2 dudes that is lending you a prototype, which is not even their final product? A prototype that Linus himself (because it was him and one more dude) couldn't be arsed to review properly and decided to complain all throughout the video? Let me step on them and destroy their business if possible.

if it worked as intended we wouldn't be talking about a 900+ waterblock for a gpu right now.

It does work as intended. LMG fucked up once again by using the wrong card. Billet Labs sent them a compatible card and LMG lost it.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. Comparing to a traditional loop, it has marginally better thermals, one less set of tubing (i.e. places for leaks to spring up), and a smaller form factor. Wether or not those are “worth the money” is completely subjective. As someone interested in custom SSF builds I thought it was interesting.

...much cheaper blocks can perform the same task just as well.

We don't actually know this since no one actually test it, just to be clear.

Unless you are going the "My minivan works just as well as Ferrari for driving to work" angle, which isn't what the high-end tech segment is really about.

completely useless for practical purposes

So what, LTT does all kinds of impractical and extreme stuff

much cheaper blocks can perform the same task

not that anyone watching LTT could possibly know this, since they didn't bother to test it properly

I didnt see anywhere that it was the "only" prototype. I believe it was their most complete or their pre-production prototype.

So likely a hand machined and finished item as opposed to something made with production tooling or in batches to reduce manufacturing cost. Something that could also be sent to reviewers as its essentially what the finished product will be. So not only are they out their best prototype, but the opportunity cost and the potential that someone like EK could have bought it and reverse engineered it to release a competing product with little to no R&D cost.

Apparently it can knock off like 80-90 degrees.